Need to know more information, though this doesn't sound related. What OS? If linux, what distribution? What version of Apache and what version of mod_perl? How did you get them (compile from source, RPM, etc.)? Is mod_perl compiled into Apache, or is it loaded as a DSO? What version of Perl, and where did it come from? What version of MySQL? How much memory does the machine have?

This sounds to me like some sort of memory leak related to older versions of mod_perl/Perl/Apache. I don't think Scoop is directly responsible for the problem.

1. Perl decided to eat a TON of memory.  I have 128MB of physical RAM and 256MB of swap.  For whatever reason, I would end up with about 10MB of swap and 1.3MB of physical RAM remaining after performing certain operations on my scoop site.  I determined that it wasn't actually apache or scoop, but it was perl.  I don't believe it is a memory leak, as it would never actually eat ALL the memory, but it would nevertheless have to be killed.
2. The iowait of my system would rocket to levels like 90% on a (very) simple operation (something equivalent to 3 or 4 polls of the mysql db and some processing).  However, because all of the swap would be eaten up, the iowait would jump tremendously, meaning the system would be bogged down unnecessarily.